Member Avatar for semiclueless

I have a HP Pavilion a1510n with a 200GB hard drive and 1024MB of memory and added a 500GB hard drive and have a question. where are songs stored and how many MB equal GB?

  • 4 Contributors
  • 6 Replies
  • 183 Views
  • 1 Day Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by semiclueless

Dani AI

Generated

There are two ways people count bytes, and that is the root of the confusion. Memory (RAM) and many OS tools use the binary scale where 1 GiB = 1024 1024 1024 bytes (so 1024 MB = 1 GiB). Drive makers use the decimal scale where 1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes. The IEC names for the binary units are MiB and GiB (mebibyte, gibibyte), which make the difference explicit.

As observed, the decimal vs binary mismatch explains why a marketed "500 GB" disk shows less in Windows. A short calculation:

500,000,000,000 bytes / 1,073,741,824 = 465.66 GiB (approx)

That number drops a bit more once the drive is formatted because file system metadata, partitioning, and OS-reserved areas (pagefile, system restore, hidden partitions) take space.

Regarding where music lives: music files are stored on persistent storage (hard drive, external drive, or cloud). RAM only holds temporary copies while a player is reading or buffering a file; RAM is wiped at shutdown, as and noted. A ramdisk can hold files temporarily (as mentioned), but that is uncommon for normal use.

Practical notes: typical MP3 sizes are roughly 1 MB per minute at 128 kbps and about 2 MB per minute at 256 kbps (lossless formats are much larger). To see what the OS reports, view drive Properties in File Explorer (Used/Free space). To move the Music library to the new drive, change the Music folder/location in the file manager or update the music player's library path so new rips go to the larger disk.

Recommended Answers

All 6 Replies

Member Avatar for jbennet

Technically 1024mb = 1gb but disk manufacturers say it = 1000mb so they can say thier drives are bigger. Thats why your "500gb" drive may show up as less

songs are stored in different places depending on your setup.

Member Avatar for semiclueless

I have a HP Pavilion a1510n with a 200GB hard drive and 1024MB of memory and added a 500GB hard drive and have a question. where are songs stored and how many MB equal GB?

are the songs stored on the memory or the hard drive or both?

Member Avatar for The New Normal

They're on the hard drive. The RAM's just there for your 'puta to put stuff temporarily that's is working on at the moment. RAM gets cleared when you power off.

Member Avatar for caperjack

RAM= Random access memory

Member Avatar for jbennet

I suppose in thepry you could rip cds to a ramdisk, e.g if you were runnig a livecd...

but no, they are saved to the hard drive.

Member Avatar for semiclueless

thanks

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.